Some of the major problems dividing the Republican Party today happen to be the same ones that created massive structural barriers to throwing a raging party at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend: the fight between the old vs. the young, and the struggle to attract the ladies.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Paul Ryan told a touching anecdote of a poor boy who said he didn't want a free lunch at school, but a brown bag one, because "a kid who had a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him."

There's not much debate over the fact that the music choices in Olympic figure skating are bland and repetitive. So we decided to offer up better solutions and are asking you to determine whose is best.

We should all be concerned about Joe Scarborough. The host of MSNBC's Morning Joe has an utterly nonsensical column on Wednesday defending his opposition to marijuana legalization — "pot just makes you dumb."

What if, instead of leaving North Korea today, Dennis Rodman didn't make it out and was instead thrown into a prison camp by the country's erratic young dictator Kim Jong-un? And what if two brave Wire bloggers had to save him?

Micah Merrill is not like you. Merrill is a gay man who enlisted for a combat arms unit — that is, the people who do the fighting — as soon as Don't Ask Don't Tell ended. Right now, he's in Afghanistan and this is his story.

Andrew Sullivan is returning to Washington, D.C., fed up with New Yorkers' "suffocating, provincial parochialism." Sullivan is sick of snobs, but is Washington really less snobby than New York? We debate.

At a special city council meeting called to debate striping most of his remaining power, Ford mimicked one fellow city councillor over past drunk driving accusations and tackled another. Ice Cube would agree today was not a good day for Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

Chris Christie's reelection by an overwhelming margin has revived the question of whether he is too fat to be president. It is a stupid question. We compared presidential BMIs to their historical rankings, and found that physical fitness doesn't tell you much about presidential fitness.

The Atlantic Wire has created three maps of conservative feuds. (Previously: 1, 2.) Each successive feud map has featured more fighters in more intense fights. In this edition: a sprawling conflict between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment, all swirling around Ted Cruz.

Last night, as the standoff over the debt ceiling and government shutdown came to an end, against the wishes of Sen. Ted Cruz, his speechwriter quickly pivoted to the topic that Republicans think will be their winning issue in the 2014 midterms: the horrors of Obamacare.